From family workshops to complete industrial systems, from simple craftsmanship to perfect quality, after more than 40 years of tempering, Ouhai Glasses has held up the banner of the development of the city’s glasses industry.

At the end of the 1970s, glasses first entered the Wenzhou market, and the Ouhai glasses manufacturing industry was blank. A group of Ouhai people who dared to work hard discovered the business opportunities behind glasses. Sales operators and handicraft workshops have joined the glasses manufacturing industry one after another, and Ouhai family workshop-type glasses processing factories have sprung up like mushrooms after a spring rain.

Beginning in the 1990s, the first batch of opticians who got rich started to rent rooms, recruit employees, and set up spectacle factories. The scale benefit of Ouhai spectacles industry began to highlight, showing a strong momentum of small spectacles becoming a big industry.

In 1993, European Optics, one of the largest eyewear companies in Europe, came to Wenzhou to purchase, which opened the door of Ouhai eyewear for export, and transformed the production of eyeglasses to OEM. In 2001, China joined the WTO. Relying on the huge resources and marketing network composed of Wenzhou people in the world, Ouhai glasses turned to the export road with sufficient cash flow. Exports have greatly stimulated the rapid development of Ouhai’s glasses industry. In 2004, the total export value of glasses was 73.55 million US dollars, in 2008, the total value of glasses exports was 145 million US dollars, and in 2013, the total value of glasses exports was 257 million US dollars. It directly hits the hearts of Ouhai people, and also makes Ouhai rapidly grow into an important production base in the world glasses industry chain.

Ouhai glasses industry needs a high-end industrial platform to launch “Ouhai glasses”. In 2016, the district government proposed to build a regional brand of Ouhai glasses. It plans to invest 5 billion yuan in three years to build a development strategy of China’s glasses town. Let Ouhai glasses industry usher in a new round of development in the spring. In 2016, the output value of the industrial glasses industry above designated size in Ouhai was more than 2.627 billion yuan, accounting for 5.0% of the output value of industrial enterprises above designated size in the region; The output value is 5.1%; in 2018, the output value of the industrial glasses industry above designated size in Ouhai was more than 2.572 billion yuan, accounting for 5.4% of the output value of industrial enterprises above designated size in the region.

At present, the town has built high-tech parks, electroplating parks, provincial quality inspection centers for eyewear products and other basic facilities. There are 155 well-known eyewear companies in Wenzhou such as Tongda Optical and Hengda Optical, including 2 high-tech enterprises, 8 provincial science and technology enterprises, and 8 municipal science and technology enterprises. In 2018, the total output value of Ouhai glasses industry exceeded 10 billion yuan, an increase of 11% year-on-year. Among them, the sales and output value of regulated glasses enterprises have maintained a growth rate of more than 20% for 4 consecutive years, and the export value in 2018 (excluding cross-border e-commerce) 2.796 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 22.45%, accounting for 18.97% of the region’s exports. The products are exported to more than 100 countries and regions such as Europe, America, Southeast Asia, Brazil, etc. Ouhai has become the main supplier of “the world’s top ten eyewear brands”. .

Standing on the new coordinates, Ouhai glasses enterprises will seize the strategic opportunity period, relying on China (Ouhai) glasses town, lead the leap-forward development of the glasses industry, boost the private economy of Wenzhou, and further polish the gold of “Ouhai glasses”. business card.

From “Zhejiang Daily”